Blue Sky Future
by Demyrie
Summary: Lewis shouldn't have started working on the time machine until he was, at least, thirtyeight. Wilbur discourages this early spurt of inquiry, but... why? Lewis laughs him off, saying a little preparatory research never hurts. But it does. It does. DarkFic
1. Chapter 1

A/N: BACKLOLLOL.

Okayso. This is me: I am a dork. A few weeks ago, I start THINKING about the time-travel logic in MtR.

As we all know, it makes no sense. PARADOXES BY THE EARFUL, and the whole 'direct cause and effect' distortion (Doris-topia back to Future-happiness before their very EYES? I think not) being the greatest of the illogical hogwash. I, being logical, wish it COULD make sense, because I take these stories so seriously I should be ashamed.

So I ask myself, how could it make sense? Then I get it.

Then I cry D: AND YOU WILL TOO. Maybe. In any case, prepare to have your mind and Lewis' world broken :D (WHY AM I SO MEEN. And dark.) If I have my way, there will be chapters to this, but it will not be finished, because I'm not THAT much of an idealist.

OHMYGODLEWIS. I scream for you. AUUUGGGHHH. (See?)

Enjoy :B

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Blue Sky Future

-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"_I don't get it_."

"Don't get what?"

Normally, Wilbur wouldn't have responded. Normally, he would've kept on playing his videogames: except that this was the fifteenth time Lewis had said it, and this time it sounded _important_.

Lewis (not _Cornelius_, mind: Wilbur treated the stuffy new name like a curse word, and Robinsons _never_ cursed) was, of course, a very important kid, so it made sense that he said important things. By the time he hit his seventeenth birthday, he had graduated with two Masters from Harvard; been on the cover of Time magazine; been featured in countless other scientific magazines and reports and appeared before countless committees to corroborate claims of incredible magnitude, all of which garnered him not a few medals. But these were all strangely impersonal triumphs that Wilbur—dear, unconcerned Wilbur with his portable GameStation and his habit of falling asleep on (or in) whatever Lewis was working on at the time—waved off with a canned congratulatory noise and a look.

This look said, 'Are you going to preen forever, Mr. Brain, or are you going to get over here so I can beat you properly?' It was topped off by a limp-wristed, yet threatening waggle of his friend's star-shaped controller, and never failed to get Cornelius—Lewis, now, sporting an impulsive grin--back in the game.

Lewis was oddly grateful for his disinterest, though anyone else—anyone else less assured of their own greatness, or their own bright, beautiful future with the biggest, most eccentric family the world would ever know—would have taken offense. But he didn't need lip service from his best friend.

Lately, all he seemed to be was a percentage, or a lime-light saturated ladder climber who had shaken hands with at least two hundred wrinkly scientists: he felt _old_. Wilbur helped bring it all back into perspective when he soundly trounced his friend for the fifteenth time on BattleSheep, a game with an innocent name and a whole lot of graphically exploding livestock to ruin it. (Lewis found a guilty pleasure in Wilbur's small collection of sophomoric games: he always made noises that began as disapproving, then exploded with undignified snorts as he careened sideways into Wilbur, simply too amused by it all to care that, with that loss of concentration, his farm was now property of Wilbaah, the evil pyromaniac Sheep King. It was just too much.)

He was still a kid. At seventeen, he was supposed to be drinking and getting into trouble and having sex and skipping class: but with Wilbur, his friend from the future, (who he counted as one of his biggest blessings, even with his parents—_his parents_—in the next room, cooking strange things with their clothes on backwards) playing video-games and wrestling was more than enough to keep him happy. Except when he had something important to say.

But lately, Lewis had been muttering important things as well as saying them outright. Dense, confusing important things.

The issue lay in his new interest: the time machine. Lewis technically wasn't supposed to start work on the time machine until he was at least thirty-seven, according to… well, the world. Wilbur mistrusted this early spurt of inquiry, and told him so: told him he could be screwing with the very fabric of time by sticking his nose into things that didn't matter _right then_. But Lewis just laughed him off and said that a little preparatory research never hurt anyone.

Wilbur didn't like it. Wilbur didn't like it at all: in fact, he almost looked nervous whenever Lewis talked about it.

Almost.

"Wilbur. _Wilbur._"

"Yeah?" Wilbur called over his shoulder again, rousing himself from his star-studded, video game. It whirred disapprovingly as he propped up the dashing red eye-piece, laser target blinking off.

"Come over here," Lewis demanded urgently, almost as though his teeth were clenched. Wilbur's fine dark brows nearly touched his hairline, but he heaved himself up anyways and trotted over the lab's honey-yellow tiling, running a doting hand through his slick hair. He stopped beside his friend, pinching his cowlick off to perfection.

"What's up, Corny?"

Every so often—and only every so often—Wilbur pushed his button and called him that, just to get some color into his face and loosen his geekus up: to remind him what a good friend he had, that it _only_ happened every so often. Normally, Lewis smacked him. Today, Lewis seemed to swallow the name with difficulty, shudder and gum up. Before Wilbur had a chance to ask, the blond pointed at the paper in front of them.

"This doesn't make sense," Lewis said flatly. Wilbur glanced at the blue spread of information, and had the decency to squint like he was interested. Then—perhaps because the plans had brief, foggy sketches of a certain something that had been stolen from his garage so long ago, and he didn't like time travel right now, didn't like time travel _anytime_ before 2022—he shrugged, and said knowingly:

"Yeah, I know. It's a problem. I always wondered, what in the world made blue-prints _blue_? Why not greenprints? Or plaidprints? Sure would liven this place up a--"

"Not that!" Lewis snapped. He tussled with the pile until two sheets of paper surfaced, notes lining their edges, quotation marks coming and going like ants. He looked at Wilbur, who had taken to leaning on the rounded desk like a bandy cat, and waited until those brown eyes met his. His finger tapped the sheets of paper. Wilbur cocked his head.

"I've been reading, Wil."

"And how's that Learn-2-Read program workin' for you, bud? Gotten up to semi-colons yet?" Wilbur asked dryly, smiling some. Lewis did not smile.

"I've been reading about time-travel," he clarified softly.

Wilbur missed a beat, eyes snapping down to the paper before he could control himself.

Lewis saw it. Wilbur swallowed.

"You mean you've… been reading about what someone thinks time travel would be like," Wilbur corrected him with growing laziness, a smart nudge in Lewis' side glazing over—erasing--his strange, stiff moment. "You're the guru on time-hopping, Lewis, don't forget. Until you come into the picture, all these goons are just shooting the bree—"

"Not if it makes sense, Wilbur," Lewis insisted, jabbing at the paper. Wilbur's hands clenched at his sides. "I don't ignore anything that makes perfect, basic _sense_. Let me explain, and you'll see--"

"I really don't think we should be talking about this," Wilbur said suddenly, too loudly for the quiet, whirring lab. He was somehow behind his friend again, cold hands in his pockets. Trying, pushing, pulling Lewis without touching him. The words came from his gut, serious and candid. Talking to Lewis. Telling him. _Warning_ him in the strange silence, and he should have listened.

The last chance.

Lewis shook his head, plowing onwards as he grabbed a pencil and began to make sense of it all. Perfect, basic sense.

"Look. Look—see? I'll draw it. Time is linear. The possibilities of other universes and time-streams are obvious, but when dealing with… with just this one string of events, the rules become more closed."

"They don't _know_ the rules yet—how could they?" Wilbur asked darkly, but Lewis had already drawn a line on the paper. Wilbur, after glaring at the diagram for a moment, slapped his hand down on the desk—the young genius didn't notice, and the pencil scratched on--and _watched._

"It makes sense that you came to get me, Wilbur. And it's alright for you to come back to see me…because you're from the future: going to the past means you disappear from your own time-stream, but until you die, you have an unlimited amount of possibilities to return." His scribbles expanded, encroaching on his hastily-penned notes. "You can return three seconds after you left, or three hours, or three days, all while years and decades could have eclipsed here. If you die, those possibilities of returning run out, and time would continue beyond your departure, and you would effectively die in the future."

Wilbur made a noise, short and annoyed.

"Lewis, for real: you're starting to go Dad on me."

But Lewis' eyes lit at that simple sentence, malcontent and hot blue behind his round glasses, and he kept going.

"But it doesn't make sense," he muttered loudly, his pencil marks arching, reaching for an idea. His knuckles were snow white on his pencil, every mark dark as iron. "It never made sense! Because… in the past, it's _different_."

"Lewis," Wilbur said, grinding the two syllables.

"Because in drawing someone from the past, you effectively change the stream of time, and send it off in another direction!" Lewis accused him, somehow, cheeks pink with the hot, cold, perfect sense of what he was saying. He crammed a hand through his hair, chewing on the information as he said it, boiling it down for Wilbur and himself. Staring at the paper.

Wilbur watched with a sinking feeling in his heart.

"The future is a derivative of the past: assuming you're working with the same time-stream, changes carry. They _echo_. If you take someone from the past and move them to the future…"

Lewis scribbled. A little stick figure with glasses was suddenly blocked from the future by an angry line. A dotted line carried him over the timestream and re-drew him under the little Future box. The angry line hemmed him in there, too, at his back. Bracketing off a period of time. Skipped time. Wilbur ran a hand through his hair, nervously.

"…They are absent for the entirety of the time jumped between the time travel. They do not grow up. They do not continue. They do not… exist."

Lewis looked up at Wilbur, blue eyes wild. The lab lay silent and sky-blue all around them, and Wilbur couldn't escape.

"Don't ask me," he scoffed, battling Lewis' searching stare with a shrug and something that was supposed to be a smile. It failed, souring into a weird sneer. "The time machine must've known you would come back eventually, so you really _did_ keep existing. You came _back_. You're here now, aren't you?"

"Time doesn't come in chunks, Wilbur," Lewis told him hotly, hands and pencil busy again; busy and working towards something that his best friend quailed from.

Working, explaining, destroying. Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.

"It doesn't recognize that I was 'fated' to come home, it wouldn't have stretched, it wouldn't have _waited_ for me to come back: it flows were it's channeled, in a straight line. It runs possibility… by possibility… by possibility."

The new, possibility-serrated line cut a killing path through the little stick-figure with glasses. Wilbur went cold.

Lewis didn't stop.

"When I went with you, I was effectively erased from the world. I didn't exist."

He was feverish with thought, thought and accusation; Wilbur didn't turn away but Lewis grabbed his wrist anyways. He clenched his fist around it and took another breath.

Working, explaining, destroying. The process had been set in motion. The stone rolled, and would not be stopped. A rushing filled his ears.

"I wasn't there to grow up and go to college and invent Robinson industries, because I went with you, and reappeared in the future. I did not _exist_. That future… it was the world made by me not being in it during all those years."

Wilbur struggled, now, feline body disorganized and panicked and he pushed at Lewis' hand on his wrist, breath coming sporadically as he protested:

"Lewis, seriously, you're thinking way too hard about this—"

Wilbur was spared questions—cold, perfect questions that would shatter his bones when fired—when Lewis wilted away from him, consumed by something curling and sick in his head and eyes. Something living, now, that refused to let go.

"But I met myself. I met my future self. But it's… a paradox. I… _saw_ him, I touched him! God, how is that _possible_?" He shouted, hands stabbing towards the future's blue sky in his golden lab. He smeared cruelly at his face, his mouth, his eyes, breath quivering. When he looked up, his eyes had been stoked by the abuse. They burned into Wilbur, boy from the future.

His future. _His_ only future.

"Wilbur, tell me: did I really see myself in the future?" Lewis asked him breathlessly. He stepped closer to his best friend, one hand out. "Is that _really_ me?"

Wilbur fell silent: he plummeted silent, hard and endlessly, with promise of a lethal impact. He looked at the floor, breath hitching in his lean chest. Lewis Robinson—Cornelius Lewis Robinson, Founder of the Future and so many things in between: a father, a son, a husband—watched him, trembling. Everything hung by a string. Wilbur bit his lip, body shuddering minutely. Losing. Losing something, because Lewis had said too much.

Finally, Wilbur Robinson spoke.

"You're not my dad."

And with a single sentence, Lewis lost everything.

The chair clattered as he fell into it.

"He isn't.., you. Okay?"

No. It was not okay. It was _not okay._ Lewis barely heard him.

"We just… knew," Wilbur murmured, choking on the words. The insufficient words. "We knew what would happen. Dad knows things like that, and he… subbed in. Pretended to be the future you."

Breath came back to him, slamming into his buzzing brain.

"H-he… he looked just—"

Long nose. Untidy blond hair. _Felt_ just like—in a warm animal blush, a soul-blossoming moment, could almost hear his heart syncing with--

His voice caught. His memories caught, snagging. Both ripped and lay rigid, flapping in the truth. Cold wind rushed in.

"Hologram." Wilbur shook his head. "We knew you, so it was easy… to make someone that looked like you. Even if you didn't really exist… by that time."

Then Wilbur Robinson, best friend and—best friend, betrayer—something to him, this teenaged kid who Lewis suddenly didn't know and wanted to _hurt_, he went down on his knees in front of him, and touched his leg. Steadying. It would have been alright, and maybe Lewis—broken, battered Cornelius—would have smiled all hazy and dead and insane, if he hadn't _kept talking._

"When I took you back, the world had changed a little. A lot. No: a lot," Wilbur promised him in a near-whisper, and his hand was suddenly twined with the other boy's. His best friend of so many years. Wilbur swallowed.

Explaining, destroying.

"It was weird," he continued doubtfully, knowing his words to be too simple to destroy a world—and yet. "Everyone who stayed behind knew it too, and saw it happen—maybe didn't know _how_--but we still kept up the farce long enough to send you back home. Then the world went right again."

He looked away.

"_Why_?" Lewis mouthed.

Somehow, Wilbur heard. Or he just knew.

"To give you confidence! Courage! Hell, I don't know!" Wilbur snapped, throwing his hands up and cleaving himself away from Lewis: broken, blond, messy little Lewis. He got to his feet and slashed at the air, unable to face him and still sour his voice and still make it true. "You were twelve, and it _worked_, okay? Here you are, making stuff up every second! You're making the world a better place, Lewis, day by day: you just aren't _him_!"

Him.

He had never invented all those things. Never. Those beautiful inventions existed without him; their _souls_ existed without him and his clever hands and his unending attention. He was suddenly nothing: his efficient hands lost all pulse and molded into reviled lumps. Nothing.

Clever hands. Time magazine. _Nothing._

But they… were in his notebook, they were in his goddamn notebook _right now_: his _plans_, everything he'd seen in the future, it was all _there_! It didn't… it didn't make _sense_, because all of them—down to the bubbles, the cars than ran on nothing but sunlight—were in his journal, even before he saw them the first time.

Plans for the future. His future. No one could've possibly made those same things, just right, just like he _would_ have. Wilbur was lying… lying, somehow…

"But—Doris—" Lewis choked, tears burning in his eyes. His hands trembled on his knees.

"You didn't invent her," Wilbur said, shaking his head softly. "It was Dad again."

Lewis pushed his chair away from Wilbur, mouth contorting as he grasped at something, anything and the wheels squeaked and only took him a foot away and still Wilbur's brown eyes killed him.

"But when I said I was _never_ going to invent…" His throat closed, face twisting. Wilbur knew the rest, and his head dropped to his chest. Tired.

"You just… let me talk through this, Lewis. You were partners with Dad when he invented her. By saying that, at that time, you just… sent negative energy into the future: by that claim, the future you would've convinced Dad never ever to make her. You were back in your own time, technically the _proper_ time-stream, so you existed in the future as Dad's partner. You destroyed her. It worked. Don't worry."

He smiled, wan and fake.

"She's not coming back, Lewis."

But it wasn't about that.

A crisis. He had defined himself by that man. That man, that… great, good, handsome _god_ with—with all that he had ever wanted. His crumbled down his spine, tucked his head into his knees and gasped. It was too much to be taken away at once: he would die.

He would die, if a piece this big were sliced away.

"But you disappeared," Lewis sobbed. "You disappeared, when Doris took over."

Wilbur couldn't stomach—couldn't _bear_—the quiver in Lewis' voice.

"I… guess…" He began in a whisper, then reasoned firmly: "Mom never would've met Dad, if it hadn't been for you. Plus… y'know, with the w-world destroyed the way it was, I… nothing really—"

"But wh-what about the family! _What about my family_!?"

He had so much to look forward to. Too much.

He wasn't The Father. He wasn't The Husband. He wouldn't marry Franny.

He wouldn't… marry Franny. He wouldn't fall in love with her one miraculous moment, then tumble into love with her day after day and then finally ask it. No rings, no white dress. It wouldn't happen. He didn't have a house full of eighty people and beautiful inventions and—he moaned at the loss, his _reason to be_. The shining Faberge egg of promise caved inside him. It twisted, yolk boiled black, sticking to his ribs and rotting there. His perfect future was stained and torn.

"We're still there!" Wilbur cried, reaching for him again, somehow.

"Franny—Oh God, Franny—" Lewis moaned into his hands, moments and ill-timed breaths from screaming and crying. His body convulsed, inches from wrenching _it_ out of him like a cancer, or making it kill him before he could think any more on what he'd lost. Franny. Franny, two blocks away and taking piano lessons.

They had a date on Tuesday. She would disappear by then. His parents were next. All of them, anyone he had ever loved, pulled screaming into this hole that Wilbur Robinson created.

Franny. He loved her. He was sure of it.

Hands gripped his shoulders.

"She couldn't _wait_, Lewis. She would've married you, but she couldn't wait—they had to move on!"

He shook his head. The words were ominous, so ominous to someone who cared, but Lewis couldn't think.

Cornelius Robinson couldn't save him, now. His god was gone.

"What am I to you?" Lewis whispered.

Wilbur looked at Lewis' cold, blank face and something inside him cracked, fingers softening on Lewis' sweater.

"You're Dad's friend," he answered. "He used your family's name for the company because you're partners. And it had more ring to it."

There was something more he wasn't saying. There was something more, but Lewis couldn't take any more. There was no _more_, when he had so little. Nothing.

Nothing.

He cried, hard and loud and destructive, clawing at his face. His half-screams dipped and struggled and were suddenly absorbed by Wilbur's shirt, who had pulled him forward and wrapped him in his hot olive-skinned arms; who trembled too, crying for the question asked too soon and the friend destroyed in front of him. His neck smelled of some clean new sport scent and he was so, so sorry. Lewis smelled like the same laundry detergent as always. They insulated their pain, feeding it to one another, thrashing and gripping.

Once Lewis fell silent—terrifyingly silent—in Wilbur's arms, time began crawling forward again on that cold tile floor.

"You invented half the stuff. Promise," Wilbur said into his ear, shuddering. "Just… keep going and everything'll be f-fine."

"Keep going?" Lewis repeated blankly, voice thick with tears.

"Keep moving forward," Wilbur said, and smiled—a skeleton of the real thing--into his friend's untidy hair.

Lewis shook his head.

"No. No," he muttered, tensing. Wilbur began to speak, or hold him more tightly, his last line of reasoning dashed by a simple word—but Lewis thrashed. His friend made an anguished noise as Lewis thrust him away, wet hands slapping at Wilbur as a roar pealed out of him, angry and jagged and breathless.

"How long did you think this lie would last?!" He snarled, raw voice cracking. His blue eyes sparked, face red and oily and abused as he crouched, far enough away. Don't touch me. Don't touch me. Wilbur clutched at his stomach, own wet face twisting.

"I told you, I don't know!" He moaned. "I didn't think this up, Lewis, it was Dad!"

Dad. Dad. Lewis. Dad; Cornelius. They were no longer the same person.

A part of him had been wrenched away; his bright future was being bisected before his eyes, and the eviscerated ill-colored stuff of his dreams _bled_. He made a noise, clutching his head until it hurt _more_.

Wilbur got up suddenly, long body swinging to face him down, face drawn taught. He pressed a hand against chest, pleading. Still crying.

"You know me! I just went along with it! I didn't think I'd have to deal with it—to deal with _you_!" He burst out, leveling a finger at him, crumpled on the ground. Then, regret crept in, and weighted his hand down to his side; his eyes slid away, and his mouth softened. He cleared his throat, trying.

"I didn't… I never thought that I _wouldn't_ be able to slip out of your life. Leave it to history. Not be a part of… whenever you found out."

Wilbur's voice broke, and he shook his head viciously.

"But you're my friend, Lewis. My best friend," he swore. "I can't do that do you. Could never."

Lewis watched him cry and crumble and something cold moved behind his eyes. Something that had to do with survival and not Wilbur: because he would have scrambled across the orange tile to grab Wilbur back, because he knew this was not his fault and his love was real. Lewis would have done it, seeing him cry.

The cold moved in, rimming his eyes and making his breath run clean.

"How do you know it's me?"

Wilbur sniffled, smearing at his face. Shook his head slowly.

"Have you ever seen me?" He demanded.

His mind was working furiously now. Searching for cracks. For loopholes. Wilbur didn't want to give him any. Still, he mumbled:

"No."

"Then how do you know it's me?" Lewis pressed, voice rough with urgency.

"I've heard your voice," Wilbur said simply, voice still weak and watery. "I know it's you. It has to be."

And that was it. The cold dusted away, because it had to be. Warm, messy emotional injuries clustered in, bleeding his brain. Wetting his face. An aneurism of the soul. Fatal.

Lewis Robinson curled into a ball on the floor and didn't move.

The lab stood to all four sides and made dull sounds, and the wide sky above stayed blue. Wilbur choked, fingers twining against his throat. Time crawled, unreal and horrific and Lewis felt that time draining the hopeless life from him and somehow wished he could keep it—and then wanted to die faster. He had nothing to look forward to.

Nothing to move forward for.

Then, for reasons neither of them understood, because all things had been said; all things had been explained so there was nothing left to destroy—magic is beautiful and wondrous until you know, then life is meaningless—but… Wilbur began talking.

Weak and fitful, he started explaining.

"The f-future is different than you know, Lewis. Things are… they're normal, at home. S-sometimes. Or everything was fine, until this happened and I met you. Dad is…"

He shook his head. On the verge of saying something that'd been going on for months, as if it mattered now. Some small glitch with him that Lewis wondered about distantly now, from his shell beneath the future's blue sky. There was a disagreement.

Wilbur ran a hand through his hair, smooth cheeks catching a breath before it half-whistled out. He looked down at the floor and said it.

"He keeps telling me to stay in my own time, but I can't. I have to see you. Even if I mess things up, I have to _see you_."

It made sense, if things made sense anymore.

The painfully harried look on his friend's face the moment he appeared from the time-machine… it seemed like so long ago that day he'd jumped out of it. But that anxious look. It eased instantly, of course, like a well-balanced pulley system lifting his features, all beguiling smile and puffed-up chest… but it was there. It was like the youngest Robinson had been sneaking around, and then arrived into a safe zone. He was breaking the rules, and he knew it. Wilbur wasn't supposed to be here with him. He might upset something.

Suddenly, Wilbur barked and it sounded a little like grey laughter that dragged into a creaking sound.

"And I don't know if this is supposed to happen. I don't," he repeated, shaking his head stiffly. "I don't know if I'm just playing into somebody's hands here, but…"

He looked up intently, absorbing his best friend's face; his mouth hung open slightly, thirsting somehow. He looked for long, long minutes.

Deciding. Explaining. Destroying.

"I don't have many friends, Lewis," he said softly, finally, but it was not an easy kind of softness: his rich voice shook at the edges, and he watched Lewis carefully. Minutely. "And I can't lose you to time."

Something had changed.

It was all so careful—his eyes, his voice--like Lewis would fly away if he didn't breathe right. His olive hands grasped at his sides—once, twice--softly but sharply. The slow mask shifted, and Lewis _smelled_ the flinty desperation on him: in his eyes, in the human crooks of his body. Hungry, scared. He moved back, somehow, finding it difficult to breathe with this new boy in the room, who gazed at him like he was in danger.

Lewis sat up.

"Wilbur, what are you—"

Then, Wilbur—agile, beautiful, boasting Wilbur who wouldn't hurt his pale best friend unless they got in a wrestling match and Lewis' arm bent, oh god, and he apologized for hours and said here, punch me, it'll make you feel better and Lewis tried it once but it only hurt his knuckles and made his cheeks burn furiously—turned and gouged his hand into the front of Lewis' sweater, gripping and smacking and knocking the breath out of him.

Lewis yelled; he reached for Wilbur's face without thinking, fingers crashing into his hot mouth and ears. Wilbur heaved him away and then Lewis' penny loafers were waggling above the tiled floor and he coughed with his back against the wall, Wilbur's fist braced against his sternum.

He called for help, stupidly, like his life mattered anymore. And help: from whom? His parents, who suddenly seemed so far away; his girlfriend with Beethoven's 5th in her pretty ears… all to save him from Wilbur, his dark, gleeful best friend from the blue-sky future. He called again, raw voice echoing in his yellow blue-sky lab. His golden lab, his Faberge egg: cracked. Wilbur's other warm hand almost invaded his mouth, silencing him. Almost drawing blood.

"No, Lewis!" He snapped, but even with fear coloring his eyes Lewis knew that he was in pain. Wilbur struggled to speak, hand trembling on his friend's chest. "I have to do this. I have to, for you and me."

"Why?" Lewis sobbed under his hard fingers, muffled. His white hands clutched his best friend's strong shoulders, squeezing. His feet had nearly stopped kicking; Wilbur flinched at the tremble in his voice and the bleeding resistance. His lifeless legs. "Wilbur, why?"

It was the best question, and the worst: it could never be answered.

"You'll be able to be great _anywhere_," Wilbur promised him, like the words were a prayer breathed across his face. His dry brown eyes lifted to paralyze Lewis'; they stared, heartbeats staggering, vision blurring behind round glasses. Lewis didn't flinch— he could only soak in the quiet horror of the moment as Wilbur touched his face and his voice withered to a whisper. "And you'll have a family. I promise."

Then a blast of cold air came from his left and the lab swerved and Wilbur's gentle hand prized him from the wall and shoved him, _heaved_ him into someplace smooth where his elbows knocked against metal. He cried out without thinking, shallow pain blossoming down his forearms. Lewis yelled for a second with his eyes closed. In moments, the yell leapt back at him, boxed in. Something clicked. Locked. He thrashed, then lurched forward, stubbing his hands on glass. He opened his eyes.

The flawless sheet of glass gave him a dim ghost image of himself, cutting off at his hands: white, scared, glasses askew. Blue eyes. Blue lights. His experimental freezing chamber. Wilbur had—

"Wilbur!"

He slammed his palms against the door. Wilbur watched him and edged away, hands knotting over his stomach as his best friend struggled against the coffin-like pod.

"Wilbur!" He screamed again, fear—real fear, the sharp black kind that lived where death did—pullulating in his wet warm human gut and gripping his skinny limbs. He didn't know what this thing could do. Fear of this machine filled him, as it could only do to one who knew all of its failings; every possible combination of lethal shortcomings.

He was seventeen, just seventeen. Had never kissed a girl.

He coughed when the gas streamed in; he beat the door, beat it again and again, until cold tar sucked up his bones and he felt dizzy—so dizzy—he couldn't lift his hand to struggle and the metal was so cold on his back--his vest riding up, all so quickly--

Fists driven deep against the horror in his gut, Wilbur dissolved in an anguished howl as the gas hit and Lewis sagged; later, it was the only thing that Bud and Lucille would remember hearing before they rushed into their son's lab and found him dead.

Dead, for all intents and purposes. Dead.

Lewis wilted, trapped in his own creation, blue eyes swimming in the sterile white that spewed from his mouth and nose. He fell. The stands caught him. His fists macerated into helpless white hands, once clever hands. Once a boy with a future. He reached out in the coffin.

_Thud_.

The last thing Lewis saw was Wilbur, always Wilbur: but not Wilbur laughing or grinning in a warm yellow halo, but pale, distant Wilbur, crushing himself against glass cracking with knife-sharp fingers of ice and _crying_.

Something came through the glass, muffled and loving and inches from some sort of death. He barely heard it; maybe he didn't.

"It wasn't all a lie."

Dark, flexible, warm Wilbur, a silhouette from a closing door: then paralyzing white.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: WOOPWOOP.

Okay, I know the first chapter was confusing. It was, and is. There ARE chapters to this, and it will explain. Sort of.

Basically, don't hang too fully onto what Wilbur was saying: only keep in mind the fact that Lewis--by my jacked-up time-travel logic, which WILL get clearer (and which is just semi-logical concept-twisting for a _fanfic_, by the way, and nothing to write a thesis over)--is not Cornelius Robinson as we know him. Wilbur has changed the time-stream a lot by his actions in chapter 1, but not so much that he can save Lewis from that fate.

AND oh god. An original character. I KNO, U ALL MUST RUN and rearrange your sockdrawers and cancel your AuthorAlert on me. XD Hopefully you like him. I do.

OHLEWIS. Apparently my mind lives to make your fictional life miserable.

(Please bite your lip and suck up the similarity that Atticus and Cornelius have. It was necessary, and I'm really sorry for it. They ARE different people, of course: just look at how Atticus deals with it versus how Lewis did. Now, look at me making excuses XD)

READ. Sorry. Sorry.

-.-.-.-.-.-

Blue Sky Future

2

-.-.-.-.-.-

He damned it all.

He damned everything: coincidence, misfortune, and circumstance. The irony in the event—and the timing--was almost unbearable, but he was not a person who appreciated irony. Particularly so when it hit the life of a fellow scientist so very hard.

Atticus was in this part of the states for the very _reason_ of meeting with Cornelius Robinson. The kid was two years his junior and already topping his STPMMN scores: what a card. During their semi-annual InventCo convention panels, they had spoken over vidlinks—the experience made all the more euphoric by the fact that Cornelius had proposed the clean-energy generator that ran it and Atticus had redesigned the interactive interface—but he had wanted to meet the real thing.

Why? Cornelius was a genius. A true scientific genius. Atticus was… something very close to genius: a half-cousin wise-guy, or a step-brother prodigy. Close enough to be invited to family reunions… or international science conventions. He made good marks in his area of science, and was welcomed with open arms.

His talent lay in improving. He couldn't invent from airy concepts in his head, but damn could he make good things even better. His improving talents were wanted all over the globe: he was the Optimizing Machine, and he was famous for his work with India's water purification systems. But that was nothing next to what Cornelius had done. That guy… could make stuff from the ground up. He could _create_. That took true talent and soul.

They could have worked well together: the creator and the improver. They got on great over the vidlink, laughing and rearranging their glasses and laughing again. Swapping blow-up stories. Forgetting they had panel audiences awaiting demonstrations of their 'genius'. Maybe—

_No_, he thought solemnly. _Unless we can work something out, there is no maybe. That's why I'm here: to make maybes for this guy_.

He had been called in for the first look. The Bureau of International Science would need a report, and hopefully further instructions: Cornelius Robinson was too important to lose.

Atticus turned his attention to the pale man crouched beside him in the hired car. They were speeding towards the old local observatory, and the inspector who had accompanied him had been peppering him with inane questions for the last half-hour. Since he had arrived from the airport, really.

"So, how old are you again, son?"

"Nineteen," Atticus answered. He had grappled with the forgetful man's questions with the utmost of courtesy, but his vivid sense of haste and productivity was beginning to drown out Taylor's pale bumbling. He was cutting him off more than he should. Plowing through him.

"And your—"

"Benz. Atticus Benz," he supplied crisply, looking out the window at the thinning suburbs. Clean, square, white suburbs: nothing like Chicago. He heard Taylor clear his throat, and probably thumb his sparse facial hair.

"Well now. That's an interesting la—"

"I made it up."

Atticus grinned, but it was presentational, like he'd been confronted with that sentence fragment far too many times.

The car came to a stop. Taylor looked at the young scientist suspiciously, grey eyebrows drifting together like two furry, curious animals, sniffing at one another.

"Is there any reason we shouldn't know your real last name?" He asked slowly, as though a magical camera should pan in: as though there was a secret agent sequestered next to him in the small car, tapping his foot, hands in his lab coat pockets, face shadowed with dark young stubble.

"I don't have a real last name." The door handle clicked. Atticus heaved his lanky frame out of their hired car and started up the driveway, shouting over his shoulder: "Normally, that would come with not having parents."

"You're an orphan?" The inspector inquired in surprise, snagging his suitcase from the backseat and shutting the door. He stretched his short legs in a strut, so as to draw level with busy, agile Atticus as the car departed—and wanting him to know that the question was not prejudicial or personal.

The young man nodded. Comfortably.

"A misplaced person, yes. But people get nervous when someone doesn't have a last name," Atticus said matter-of-factly, unabashed of the stereotype: it was true. Not having a last name implied a lack of belonging, and a lack of roots. A lack of stability. Any decent person with a house and a family and a history would be nervous around someone who apparently popped out of nowhere. Like they weren't real.

It was a strange mixture, really. Something between pity and fear. Certainly nothing that went harmoniously in a work environment, so Atticus changed that.

"So, for business purposes, I am Atticus Benz," he finished, holding the door to the Observatory—the Robinson household—for Mr. Taylor.

"Like the car?" Taylor asked hesitantly after a moment, edging himself through the door.

"Like the car." Atticus affirmed, serious tone quieting the slow and loquacious Mr. Taylor while the two strode down the first hallway to the right of the odd little observatory, which was obviously going through remodeling. The walls were half-painted an odd purple hue, and equally odd wall art decorated the floor for the moment. It was just… odd. Atticus lingered briefly on all of these things after he passed through the foyer: these people, the Robinsons, had made a home out of something that had never resembled a home.

Creating something from nothing. It ran in the family. His brow creased, mournful anxiousness returning full force. Hopefully, it would continue.

They burst into the laboratory; into muted camera pops and murmurs and the sound of their footsteps on golden tile. People turned to face them, with one thing in common: sad eyes. They were not paparazzi, but crime-scene reporters. This would be quiet, for sake of the family. The reporters watched the two walk through the lab with a steely gait, toward the source of the mournful silence.

The prism-shaped pod lay bolted against the far wall, a steady blue light radiating from its innards and user console, which—Atticus winced, stomach souring—was unlabelled and had wires protruding like hair. Half-finished. Unearthly blue stained the air and gurgled around a motionless silhouette, angled like a discarded doll in the mechanical coffin: Cornelius Robinson. The glass was frosted, stained with the young man's last wet breaths.

A handprint lay in the white glaze.

Atticus approached the machine, own breath catching in his chest, staining it a tense black. He had spoken with Cornelius over five months ago, but it was hard to forget his face. His smile radiated confidence. Sweet, sure confidence. He had a young, squirming chuckle that could bring girls to their knees, if they were smart, and hair that brought a smile to anyone.

And the glasses. Why the glasses? Anyone could get contacts in this day and age. Atticus frowned, touching his own rectangular glasses. No. Distracting thoughts were all well and good, but… He scanned the scene--the whole of it—and steeled himself. Cornelius, young laughing genius, half-slumped in his own machine, skin ocean-blue, glasses nearly knocked off his nose. Unconscious—he hoped. Controls apparently stable. The inside of the chamber steamed gently.

The young scientist touched the side of the machine, drawing back at the utterly frigid metal. His bright blue eyes dissected the small pod; lastly, his eyes came to rest intently on the boy inside again. After a still moment, he looked over his shoulder, thick brows twisted.

"He fell in?" He demanded softly.

"That's what it looks like." Taylor said, hesitant to pass judgment: as though he too doubted that such an intelligent young man would have simply _fallen_ into something he had the genius to create.

Atticus nodded, unwilling to simply agree. The lab—Cornelius' pride and joy, he could tell: he almost felt indecent, storming such a private place—shifted quietly around him. Respectful. Everyone knew the young man; he was the pride of the country, and there was no doubt that this would hit America very hard. The lab had absorbed the tragedy, a lasting picture of who Cornelius _was_.

Atticus knew he would have to break the spell: he would have to tear the lab apart, trying to find out what exactly this machine was, and what it could do. What it would do, if someone tried to open it without any preparation. If there was any shadow of a chance that--

Notes. He needed blueprints, plans. He needed to know this machine's life, so he could save its creator from death. He touched the glass. Cornelius did not stir. It cracked a part of Atticus to see that, even though it was ridiculous to expect anything else. He sighed, studying his almost-friend. There was something so… sudden about the way it all appeared. An arrested moment, an insect in cloudy blue amber. His hands were half-curled, long-fingered and white. And if he looked at the young man's face long enough, it warped into something just short of anguish—

His hand fell flat on the glass with a small thud, grazing the handprint.

"Cornelius, we'll get you out of there," he murmured, eyes pinned sightlessly on one penny loafer, almost knocked loose from its foot. He grit his teeth. "I promise."

Taylor nodded grimly and left him alone with the dead child and the pop of cameras.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Outside, Fritz and Petunia had arrived in an avocado station wagon plastered with cat hair, screeching to a halt in the driveway. They were an hour early.

Bud stumbled from the shadowed doorway of the observatory, his wife trailing after like a ghost. Petunia disembarked, her sharp heels challenging the gravel drive, and strapped her purse over her shoulder. Fritz hurriedly shut the car down, shoved it into park and barreled out, slamming his door shut. Then, after making such haste, he saw his brother and froze, knees caving.

"Hello, there," Lucille whispered into the silence. Her lab coat was stained and her face was white. "I'm so glad you came."

Tentatively, quivering down to his high-water pant cuffs, Fritz reached for his eldest brother. Without waiting another moment, Petunia wrapped Lucille in her arms, smart white gloves entrenched in the warm woman's back.

"Honey. Oh, honey," she murmured, bright red lips pursed as Lucille breathed too quietly against her shoulder. Once they all had parted, murmuring and sniffing, eyes drifted to the dome of the laboratory.

"He… he, uh—C-cornelius--" Bud began, choking softly. Petunia shook her head vehemently, eyes closed.

He tried to explain, somehow, about their son. Their Cornelius. He gestured while his face, his unsure grey pain-filled face, flickered into a ghostly smile. Within seconds, it crumbled: he followed. He couldn't find the words, but breaths filled in the spaces, harsh and deep and full of loss. Lucille covered her mouth. It was too soon.

Bud sobbed silently, pushing a hand over his red eyes as Lucille took his arm and led him back inside. Fritz and Petunia, waiting a mournful moment, got their bags and followed.

Family comes together at the best and worst of times. The test of true family is if they arrive that extra hour early: the test is that they _run_ together at the worst of times, and stay the night in that cold darkness.

Joe arrived two weeks later, a day earlier than expected.

The Robinsons were a family.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: I'm sure—and know—that some of you already know how this is going to go :D But since the destination was outlined in the first chapter, the fun is in _getting there_!

Or rather, the horrible, horrible circumstances and many mournful happenings in getting there D: OH WELL.

As for questions, Lewis is coming, and we will be seeing Wilbur again (Love to Elorai :B Thank you for all your kind words, sweetheart!) annnnd… hopefully more of the Robinsons, if I can squeeze them in. And I'm also glad that Atticus hasn't caused a mass spasm of dislike XD Thank you for your reviews, honeys!

Enjoy, and a Merry Christmas to you!

-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Blue Sky Future 3

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It had been nearly a week.

A week was a mere mouthful of days: both too short and too long when dealing with a crisis like this. Everyone was scrambling in slow motion, it seemed. Infuriatingly incompetent, stumbling over simple things like _words_ instead of scientific conjectures. Atticus was to report to the International Bureau of Science the next day and compile an analysis of the situation, but that was hard to think about—and so much of him feared putting this…eviscerating event down to a static statement or summary--when… when he didn't know if time was quickly running out for Cornelius, or if _he_ was wasting his time.

He didn't know which was more frightening.

The chamber was tightly sealed. Force was not an option. The entire set-up just… mangled his brains. He couldn't understand it; there were no blueprints that he could see. As it was bolted to the wall, there was no way to move the chamber anywhere without breaking the seal and the temperature controls. It was just… impossible.

Atticus simply had to trust that Cornelius' knack at making first-pass technological breakthroughs would shine to its fullest here. The machine was imperfect, but there was a chance that Cornelius' intuition was good enough… that it would keep him alive until Atticus found a way to get him out. It wasn't altogether impossible, and the young scientist found his shaky faith growing evermore as he leafed through, then devoured Cornelius Robinson's invention notebook.

He had moved into the Observatory foyer, to look over notes in the boxes of sunlight draped on the stairs. The lab was somehow a dead space for him, mostly because his eyes kept straying… and the nauseous, congealing feeling of one's own mortality and responsibility was never something that kept minds on track. Cornelius shocked him, over and over again… every time he looked. He had to move his station out—so now Atticus reclined on the grand central staircase of the foyer, flipping through Cornelius' work for the fifth time.

His notes were… amazing. He didn't find anything about the freezing chamber, but he couldn't stop _looking_ at it. Ideas bumped into each other, crowded at the edges of each page, singing of a busy brain with too much to give to humanity. Bubbles. Ships that ran on nothing but sunlight. Gravity boots. A whole world--a startling, circular, sky-blue cloud-edged utopia--was outlined with a steady, artistic hand in the ordinary, often food-stained notebook pages. Atticus half-smiled when he thumbed past a page utterly eaten whole by a spaghetti-sauce smear.

Cornelius took meals in his lab sometimes, obviously. Atticus knew the feeling of being so addicted to his work… but the sudden image of Cornelius, blue eyes hopping intently from a computer display to his notes, bowl of spaghetti balanced in one hand, waggling a pencil in the other, smile never far away—it unsettled Atticus, somehow. It was too domestic, too normal or real. It spoke to him, though Cornelius was—_had to be_—so different from himself.

Atticus frowned to himself, tearing at an itch on his ear. He had never been so _good_ at imagining things. Or people. Or situations he had never seen. He had different kinds of visions, which few found artistic: they were simply practical. He had no idea why his mind had to become so handy with sincere adjectives in the past few weeks, right when things were so _indescribable_.

He felt like he was stepping into somebody else's life: and he was. Somebody's life, frozen, and here he was wading through. Trying not to melt anything. The intrusion wouldn't be permanent, of course, but… it would help to think like Cornelius did. Wouldn't it?

It might help him figure things out.

"… Excus—ah, hello?"

Atticus looked up, pencil caught between his even teeth. A dark-haired teenager in glossy red pumps stood in the doorway of the Robinson house, one hand lingering close to the handle—like she might back out and snap the door shut if something startled her—the other balancing a pot of something he could smell from his slouch on the stairway. Garlic.

Little did he know that she was a lauded black belt and half-time Judo instructor at seventeen, and had seventeen different ways to render him unconscious/sterile using said pot if he turned out to be a robber or an anarchist lounging around in the sunlight after raiding Cornelius' lab. And she would do it, too.

He stared at her for a moment, watching her cock an expressive, smoky eyebrow (subtly shifting the weight of the pot to her palm), then he tasted pencil and saw sense. He'd seen her once before, leading Cornelius' parents into another room when they… needed a moment to themselves. She hadn't seen him, but he knew what she was--to Cornelius. Everything he encountered had to be defined by that boy: his relationships, his dreams.

He had to respect the echo the young man left behind.

Atticus sprang up to greet her, then buckled with a yelp: the papers that had been sitting on his lap slipped down his knees and all over his feet, documents shooting out of their manila folders. He dropped to his knees, groping at them, then looked up, flashing her a weird, bright smile.

Despite herself, the visitor smiled back. Her small musician's hand loosened on the door handle, and she let the door shut itself. The pot shifted minutely back to its normal perch. Atticus fumbled more with the papers, aligning them, then sat back, dusting off his hands. He was about to introduce himself like any respectable person, but then spared a mordant thought towards his appearance—he hadn't shaved in days and whereas Cornelius liked to share his food with his notes, Atticus always preferred his shirt to have a share. He appeared flustered as he tucked his lab coat around his probably stained middle, mumbling:

"I'm, sorry, I—"

"Mr. Sorry? Odd name," the girl said wryly, but her clear voice couldn't fool anyone. The circles under her eyes were too intense; her skirt and blouse were wrinkled. She stood as though she hadn't had a peaceful moment in weeks. Atticus stood up, properly buttoning his coat. He was encouraged by her lopsided wit, even if her face failed to reflect it.

"You can't say that 'till you've heard my real one," he said mildly, smiling a bit.

"Atticus," she supplied, brown eyes trained beyond him, at a doorway. She only looked back when he didn't confirm or deny it: her face tightened slightly when she realized he was staring up at her, mouth open. "Is that right?"

"Uh. Yes." Atticus swallowed. He fiddled with his tie. It only made sense that she knew, but… that also deprived him of a conversation topic. He was hard up for innocuous conversation topics these days, especially with… family members. The young woman nodded.

"Lucille told me," she explained, voice suddenly weak and full. Her eyes retreated again, glazing the yellow tile found everywhere in the observatory as she fretted with the hem of her skirt. Hesitating. "What you're here for, and everything."

Her boyfriend might be dead.

Atticus swallowed and nodded too, but she stuck her free hand in his direction before he could mess anything up with words.

"I'm Francesca Framagucci," she said evenly now, clearly forcing herself past something; swallowing it down. Atticus could only watch these internal conversions with confusion, unnerved by the unwieldy strength she seemed to hold over herself and the way she changed with what she said. She must have been in at least as much grief as his parents, and yet—from what he'd seen, some of the responsibility of keeping Lucille and Bud in one piece must have fallen on her. Strong girl. Francesca.

He took up her hand, unsmiling.

"Atticus Benz," he answered. She nodded back—their thousandth nod, it seemed—and focused on switching her dish to the other hand, carefully balancing whatever lay inside. While she was distracted, he pounced, or flopped: because he could never look someone in the eye and say _it_ without stumbling, but he had to say it. It came with his job, and his intrusion.

"Uh… Francesca, I'm…" he mumbled. She looked up readily, unfortunately enough. He twitched, cleared his throat, and tried again, steeling himself: "I'm so sorry—"

"For my loss. I know," Francesca said, more sharply than she intended. He flinched and clenched his jaw shut.

She looked down for a moment, then seemed to remember the pot in her hand. Atticus saw warm brown stew rolling inside of it, potatoes bobbing up like islands; Francesca gestured to their left.

"Come with me to the kitchen?"

"Sure, I… yes," he murmured, tucking Cornelius' precious notes inside of his travelers bag. She strode to the kitchen without another word, familiar with the house in every way. It was hers as much as the Robinsons.

Bud and Lucille never said it aloud, but they dearly hoped that Franny would marry Cornelius one day. Just a little dream of theirs.

Once inside, Franny set the pot down and turned to face Atticus, who felt more like an invader then ever, standing there with his lab coat and his conscious estrangement. His protective, conscious estrangement.

"You probably don't want to get involved," Franny said, steely voice shocking him again. There was no 'but'; there was no apology. She was young and pretty with a sweet olive face made for smiling, but she had this in her too—this metal core. She scrubbed a fleck of something off the counter.

It wasn't about what he wanted anymore, honestly. Yes, he wanted to stay here and work, all for the eventual goal of reviving Cornelius… but it was quickly congealing into something more like a need. Obsession was another word for something this intense… but it seemed derogatory when his cause was so _important_. Nobody could overstate the importance of bringing Cornelius back.

Nobody.

He opened his mouth and looked at the ground, not knowing what she wanted to hear. No, he didn't want to get involved; yes, he did. He knew this was no place for percentages and his own scientifically convoluted thoughts, not in the face of her loss. His sincere adjective superpowers were failing him, suddenly. She shook her head.

"I… don't believe he's gone," she said, voice softening. A careful quiver weakly cemented her words together. "I can't believe it. If you just _knew_ him, you would…"

She fell silent, pressing her tiny fingertips to her forehead as her face twisted. Her red lower lip disappeared under her teeth.

"He can't die," Franny whispered finally, looking up at him. Her brown eyes were dry, but Atticus wasn't surprised, somehow. She searched for the right words and, after a scared breath, tried them aloud. "The world is hurting, because he isn't here. It's darker. Denser."

He nodded numbly, hands sinking into his pockets. She was hurting most of all, but she _knew_ that her loss wasn't just emotional. Atticus felt it too, that broken promise: he found faint glimmers, paralyzing and bittersweet, of what _might have been_ if Cornelius were still working, creating. He saw it in the young man's notes, saw how dreams might have become reality. In a modern world where war was always a possibility, the environment was suffering under years of human abuse and a fuel crisis drained wallets and the earth, their Deus ex Machina was gone.

Their future was changed now, without him. She was right. She was too right.

"It's just… it would be so wrong," she murmured. "It's been years, but he finally had the life he wanted. Five years is too short for… a perfect life."

"What do you mean?" Atticus asked after a slow moment where Francesca did nothing but look out the window over the kitchen sink and tremble. It was just something to say: he didn't expect her to answer. He expected her to shake her head and leave, but she stayed perfectly still, small of her back braced against the kitchen counter.

"His life. He…"

She looked at him, then, and realized him for what he was: an outsider. She was inside a house and a life. He stood on the other side of the closed door, foreign and uncomfortable with wide eyes and a notepad eternally in his hand. To let him in? She risked shoving him in the door. She risked the fact that the door might lock behind him.

But she needed to talk. God, she needed to talk. Maybe talking about Cornelius—sweet, sure Cornelius with the perfect world in his eye and his abashed chuckle—would help this man understand what everyone was losing. Maybe he would try harder, then, like any of them would, had they the power.

Franny sighed, pushing her hair behind her ears.

"His family. He had a family. Finally."

"He didn't—"

"The Robinsons adopted him five years ago. I mean, I never knew him before it happened, so it wasn't like I waited with him and can say 'finally', but he… told me about it. He told me all about waiting for a family," She said quickly—almost sorry, now, that she'd spoken at all. Atticus' blue eyes were wide, busy hands frozen in his pockets.

"Sorry," she said miserably, shoulders twisting. Head tilted at an angle that hid her eyes, she picked up her potholders and walked out of the kitchen. Her heels clicked softly.

Atticus blinked, trying to restart his heart. Both of them. They were the same: misplaced persons. Then, seeing her leave, he stumbled after her, fast enough to get to the door before she did. She stopped, giving him an unwilling glance.

"I'm…" he began, and found nowhere to go.

_I'm sorry_, he was going to say. _I understand_, he was going to say, but he didn't really, because he had gotten on just fine in his college dorm at age thirteen. Alone, self-sufficient: a ward of the state. They were so different, but… he just ended up shaking his head, feeling the echo of the frozen young man come to rest inside his bones a little more. Shaking him. His hand trembled, small and ordinary as he opened the foyer door for Ms. Framagucci.

They talked, somewhat, as they walked. Exchanged neutral comments about neutral things: it must have felt good to have an unloaded conversation, but only so much. If they had been walking in the park, it might have been ideal: but they were in a broken home, and its flagging support beams weighed on their clipped exchange.

She was intelligent, tired, and real. It was better than reasoning with the logic circles in his head and the myriad, sticky difficulties of his task. He didn't realize where he was leading them until he opened the gold door to start into the laboratory, and she caught his arm with a white hand.

"Please," she burst out suddenly. "I'm so sorry, I can't. I can't go in. Can you…"

She pleaded in bits and pieces, drawing closer—his elbow pressed against her side, strangely intimate for a girl he'd just met, as she coaxed him away--then she realized _what_ she was keeping him from, and shook her head. Her features were more liquid and mournful than he had seen…on anyone.

"No. You have to go."

"Ms. Francesca, any other time…" Atticus protested, voice pinched and earnest.

"Don't worry about it," she said softly, and drifted away, hands smoothing her bell-shaped skirt. He felt the air between them, solid and erasing. "Thank you, Atticus. I'll help Lucille with the cooking and then I'll be out of your hair."

He didn't bother to protest that she wasn't bothering him: it's what she needed to believe, and he didn't want to shout it because she was already in the kitchen by the time his voice, timid and raw, crawled back to him. He leaned against the door for a moment, closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose between two thick fingers. It did nothing good, but it made a little reddish feeling come back to his face. Then he went into Cornelius' lab and didn't come out for hours.

Atticus stayed for dinner that night, because he knew Mrs. Robinson—kind, pear-shaped Mrs. Robinson—would cry if he refused. Even so, she cried at dinner, sobbing deeply over her pot roast and stew, because while Fritz and Petunia sat near them on the counter, there were only three _real_ seats at the table and he filled one of them.

Life was never a scientific endeavor.

Life was never removed; life was never clean-cut. There was no way to attempt to revive Cornelius Robinson without experiencing some kaleidoscope vision of his existence. But it was invasive, because the vision was so complete and warm and fresh: Atticus was on a bed of nails, surrounded by a shattered family and Cornelius' brilliant, residual _glow_. And it was getting worse every day. It was getting harder to resist giving them everything he had, because he knew the _need_.

Thus, Atticus refused the free plane ride that would take him back to his offices in Chicago and stayed on in a hotel a few miles from the observatory. Just a little bit longer. He called the Science Bureau and told them through his teeth that he might have found something, and needed more time near the chamber. It was, sadly, an utter lie, but the Bureau jumped at it, indecently relieved. He wished it were true.

No matter what, no matter how many lies it took, he had to save this young man.


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: And here we… mostly cease flashbacks. Kinda. This story is very hippity-hoppity concerning flashbacks. Now? The chapter of 'In Which it Becomes Painfully Obvious Just What Happened.' ENJOY.

Thank you so much for all of your kind words, guys :3 I really, truly eat allovvum up. (And I'm so glad Atticus is a go!) I'm so enjoying writing this!

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Blue Sky Future

4

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Wilbur's daddy was odd.

Of course, he was nothing like other daddies because he was a Robinson. Because of that, Wilbur counted himself one-up on other kids: because nobody had lived the best day ever until they'd spent a day with _him_, Wilbur Robinson. He had more toys than anyone could dream of; his bushes were dinosaur-shaped. His toaster got impatient with him, and his mommy actually told him to stop teasing the refrigerator once. He had boots that made him jump really high, too, but his favorite things were toys that his daddy had invented for him. Just for him, because that meant that he taught Wilbur how to use them, and his daddy was just about the coolest ever to hang out with.

Wilbur's daddy was a scientist. He was gone a lot, but Wilbur loved him dearly; so did mommy, and it wasn't just because he always brought weird stuff back for them. Plus, the house was never empty. Wilbur was never lonely, because there was always Cousin Lazlo and Cousin Tallulah and Lefty to play with and other times he was at school. Wilbur didn't like school very much: he had just started school, kind of, but he already knew he liked his high-roofed house with its squiggly carpeting and noisy, full rooms best.

He liked home better than school because of who was there. Wilbur didn't have many friends at school. Nobody really talked to him. That's why his daddy was his best friend and he always tried to help him out in the lab—which was always a cool place to be because everything gurgled and the roof was glass. Wilbur loved playing with his dad in the lab, but there was something funny about the lab, or his dad, or both.

It went like this: every morning (or at least every morning that Wilbur was there too) Daddy went into his lab and said 'Good morning.'

Wilbur didn't know who he was saying good morning to, but he didn't sound happy when he said it. His daddy was a pretty happy person and Wilbur didn't understand: maybe it was because none of his inventions said good morning back? Every morning it was the same, and he kept guessing at who his daddy was talking to. He didn't know, until one day when Wilbur was hiding a little bit where he shouldn't have been (just a little, because he was only half inside the air-duct), he saw Daddy look around, sigh, and go over to a long box with a curtain over it and say:

"Good morning."

Just like always, only this time he touched the curtain and then went to work.

Wilbur waited until his daddy was out of the room (he was really tall and skinny so he was easy to watch leave) and clambered out of the air-duct, scraping moist grey dust off of his overalls, and approached the blanketed box. It hummed just like everything else in daddy's lab. Maybe it glowed a little, if he cocked his head.

"Good morning," he said, distinctly as he could with three teeth missing.

Nothing happened. He hadn't hoped to feel sad like Dad, but when nothing happened… it was disappointing to say the least. As a Robinson, he was used to having interesting things bang and explode and throw everyone into a multi-colored uproar. This was boring. The silence was sad in a flat way, and made his lower lip creep out.

"Good morning!" He said again, because it seemed the only thing to say to a covered box.

Then he realized that he didn't even know what he was saying good morning to, and why it didn't have proper manners, and got a little upset. Only a Robinson could have a bruised ego from a piece of equipment not returning their salutations. All the same, Wilbur grit his little checker-board teeth and grabbed a fistful of the scratchy green cloth and pulled as hard as he could, feeling his little red sneakers squeal on the linoleum as he yelled a final time:

"_Good_—"

He never finished, because two things happened: the blanket gave and his sneakers went whizzing out from under him and he fell back on his bottom with three armfuls of blanket over his legs, and his dad came back.

"Wilbur?" His daddy called from somewhere in the lab, nice brown shoes clicking slowly closer. He sounded troubled, which meant that Wilbur might be _in_ trouble for messing with his good morning machine. Wilbur hurriedly shoved the wad of blanket back from his knees so he could escape back into the air-duct, but looked up in the process. Wilbur's eyes stuck to the secret glossy box, and no amount of blankets in the world could cure the chill that settled in his tiny bones: it radiated off the machine in white tendrils and made it hard to be brave. He squinted past the bright glare cast by the laboratory's halogen lighting and when he saw past the glass he stayed on his hands and knees and stared.

There was a man in Daddy's good morning machine.

Daddy might have called his name again: once or twice. But by the time he trotted up the steps and found his little son kneeling in front of the poisonously blue pod, it didn't matter. His daddy stopped and clapped a hand over his mouth. Wilbur looked over, face white.

"Daddy?"

Daddy's mouth came unplugged with a giant scared sound and he clambered up and dropped to his bony knees beside Wilbur and scooped him up into his arms.

"Oh, hell—_oh hell_, Wil," he moaned, messily cupping a large hand to his son's cheek and turning his face—his pretty face with his mother's big brown eyes--away. "That's—"

But he stopped and just shook his head.

"Who—" Wilbur squeaked, squirming against his father's broad shoulders.

"It's—he's one of daddy's friends, baby," his daddy explained, sounding scared.

"Is he dead?" Wilbur whispered, straining to peek through his thick fingers at the cold sky-blue box to see the man: the good morning machine. Had it eaten him?

Daddy stopped and thought and shook a little before he answered, soft as he could:

"He's just sleeping."

Daddy stayed and ruffled Wilbur's perfect hair for a while. After a moment more of his dad's too-warm, airless hug, Wilbur prized himself away and looked up into his dad's face, a new feeling making his insides itch. He wasn't quite sure that Dad was telling the truth. His little face constricted.

"You can't sleep standing up," Wilbur told him solemnly. His daddy dropped his head and ran a hand through his messy dark hair.

"He's different," he said after a while, struggling with something. His bright blue eyes flickered this way and that. "He's like… you know Sleeping Beauty, right, Wil?"

His little boy nodded. It was a girly story, but he knew the basics.

"He's sleeping, because a sort of… curse was put on him. In there. He's been sleeping for a long time, and we don't know when he's going to wake up, you see," Dad explained, putting a hand on Wil's shoulder and looking tiredly into his eyes. His daddy looked old, a little. "He got stuck in there, and he's just sleeping, but we hope we can wake him up soon and he can come to dinner. You see? Would you like that?"

Wilbur thought that, as full as their house was, the new person would need a room to stay in, and he didn't know if they had any left but he didn't know if he wanted to share his room with a blue guy. Wilbur's daddy finally laughed and said they could think about that when the time came, and maybe the blue washed off, and Wilbur felt much better about everything.

It wasn't scary at all, this good morning machine. Wilbur's daddy was just saying hello to his sleeping friend, who he hoped would come and stay for dinner one day.

Wilbur liked dinner best when Carl made meatballs.

Twelve years later, Daddy's friend woke up.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

It was like being ripped out of a hole in the ground.

But this hole was a skeleton: he was a fleshy organic flap, sealing the hole, dry veins grown into the black wet hard sides of it like vines. He had no form. He simply filled the hole as he made it, a quietly throbbing growth with white bones sealed into the hole around him, poking through his skin. Woven into the hole. They were part and parcel, he and the hole.

And both of them were nothing.

Then someone reached inside and punctured him and the cold secret air hissed out and all of a sudden he was being ripped off and off and _off_, like canvas from the frame or a fleshy, root-riddled plant from hundred-year soil. Out, up, _rip_--pain as his bones separated, some left behind in the hole, waggling like broken tree limbs. Crack. Crack. Crack. His veins had snapped off, wriggling along his white arms—but white, everything was white because it _felt_ that way.

He opened his eyes and he was on his feet for a split second. Feet.

He saw gold. He saw sky-blue. He saw something tall and warm-looking and darkly moist—rich was the word--and he knew it was a person. He knew that this person was very important: that notion came rushing out along with all the frigid air, some lasting thought that had been trapped with him. In the hole. In those last moments before white.

Now… let free, let loose. _Exposed_.

His arm jerked up in front of his face, reaching.

"W-wilbur—" he thought, or said, or cried. It came out and was swallowed in a vomit of sound, nonsensical.

But he felt like dust: his organs were pulverized, bruised sacs, and he could feel his face shriveling in the non-white air—he was going to die _again_--

The lab heaved in front of him as his hole gaped behind him, several white blurs throwing themselves left or right as voices raised, high and low and nauseating. His arm dropped, broken. Waggling at his side. He took a breath.

"How c-could you d—"

Then he died.

He collapsed forward and splashed into another hole, and as the green sloshed up over his white ears and his eyes flickered shut, he left the world, only conscious of the horrible, mortal chaos raging around him and the tall, richly colored boy in the center of it all.


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: Nother shortish chapter for yew all, just 'cos you're so good. (AND IT'S CHRISTMAS.)

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Blue Sky Future

5

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"Atticus, you're needed. You are."

Atticus nodded to himself, looking blearily outside. There were birds outside, and that was about as much thought-recognition as he had in him at the moment. He had the phone cupped messily to his unshaven chin, just an inch below the useful position: but he hadn't been talking much, so it didn't matter where the phone receiver lay. It was Sara, from his offices. Elder member. Helped him out a lot. Or, used to.

He hadn't been to work in a while.

"Whatever it is, somebody else can handle it," Atticus told her, sculpting his voice into something unyielding and gray. "I may be needed, but I'm needed more here. Send Chris, or someone. Anyone."

The birds—blue-jays, happy as can be in their new tree just outside the golden laboratory—twittered and peeped.

"I'm worried for you," Sara finally said, rich voice reduced to some tinny and electronic echo over the old phone.

Atticus let his forehead slide to the cold counter.

"Why?"

"You've been there for _months_, honey," Sara exclaimed softly. Atticus could see her clutching the free side of her face with her rich long red nails, wrapped in this imaginary unspeakable anguish she was trumpeting to him. Useless, inane. Her voice had started to hurt his ears ten minutes ago.

"Mid-July to October: that's a little under one-hundred days."

"I keep a calendar, Sara," he said dryly, scrubbing at his messy dark hair. He had work to do.

"But I don't think you _look_ at it," she insisted, tsking and fussing and Atticus' forehead stayed on the cool counter and his work ran circles in his horizontal head. Plans. Ploys. Cornelius' notes permanently imprinted against his eyelids… "I think… Are you sure you're not…"

Suddenly, he was aware of something, hiding in the midst of her jabber. An anvil was suspended, swinging above his head. He hadn't seen the shadow before, as Sara chatted on with him and then gradually turned their conversation to darker, more urgent things—normal, worrying things, but not _horrible_ things—but now it made him feel cold and dense.

It creaked on its rope. She held her breath.

"What?" He demanded, somehow angry when she had nothing more to say but everything to imply. Her silence reeked of chewed nails and tender subjects; of her colleagues' input and consensus; of long nights thinking _just how to phrase this._

"C'mon, please, it's just… Are you sure you're not getting too attached to them?"

"_No_, I--" he exclaimed, then found he could do no more than mumble. Suddenly, thick weakness bogged him down from the waist up. "I'm just… doing my job. I'm just doing what I came here to do."

Sara sighed, soft and real, and Atticus let the phone receiver slide again as the numbness spread to his fingers. She thought she knew, and that was good enough for her.

"It's happened before, hon. There's a kind of... pull that comes with grief, Atticus. Like a whirlpool, if you'll excuse the un-researched metaphor."

He almost smiled. He liked his metaphors to be researched.

"You get sucked in, and… they need someone. They lost their son."

"He's not _lost_—" Atticus muttered hotly through his set teeth. It was almost involuntary.

Already, people were talking like he was gone. He wasn't.

"I… I know. You know that. You're still there, which means—but, please listen. They need someone to talk to, to help them. You're that person. So you step in where you're needed, just like you always do, because you're a _good person_. And suddenly when all of your basest needs are filled—you're fed, you're clothed, they invite you to stay in their _home_ when you have a perfectly good hotel a few miles away—"

He winced: he knew it, and he had felt so guilty saying yes. He felt guilty _knowing_ he felt guilty saying yes, because it was what he dearly wanted, which included Mrs. Robinson _not crying_ as often as possible and if that could happen, hell, he would agree to drive one-hundred miles to a hotel, back and forth, but as this seemed to work for both of them he saw no reason not to—he didn't _want to see reason_—

"--and you're needed so intensely, but for all the wrong reasons…"

Far away in Chicago, Sara swallowed deeply. She was going too fast now. The fearful momentum carried her and she blurted it in a tense stretched tone:

"And you pretend that they're your family—"

"_I'm not pretending_!"

Atticus slammed his hand on his desk. The birds outside took off, leaving an awkward pause. He choked on it, pain flaring in his palm, and then tumbled on in a livid voice:

"I'm a little old for that, Sara, alright!? I'm a goddamn scientist—more than capable of debunking personal fantasies! I'm here to revive Cornelius and that's _it_. I can't avoid this family, but I know where I stand and I won't let anything suck me in like that! This is professional, regardless of what you think!"

His hand stung, but nothing like what she said next. Rendered invisible by the phone, sitting a thousand miles away where she couldn't see his blue eyes absorb the pain and the impact, she closed her own eyes, spoke softly and pulled the trigger.

"You aren't Cornelius, Atticus. You have to remember that."

"If you're through _listening_ to me, then I'm done talking," Atticus hissed, crashing the phone back into its base with a hot, stiff hand and thrusting himself back into his chair, teeth bared. His fingers clawed at his arms, little at a time. Needled by her stupidity, her _gall_. It was insulting, all of it. Horrible to _think_ about.

He wasn't pretending. Wasn't.

But what left him shaking in his chair was what he had almost said after that:

_I'm not pretending. I don't have to: not when it's so very _real.

He moved back into his hotel the next day. Lucille didn't cry until the door shut.


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: One word for this chapter?

OWCH.

(Thank you all again for your love, guys :B I apologize for the strangeness of this chapter, too!)

-.-.-.-.-.-

Blue Sky Future

6

-.-.-.-.-.-

The Quiet rippled. A time limit was ticking; Time itself was back. He was running out of air, or something urgent and red, even though air hadn't been an issue before. Suddenly he had _needs_: acidic, human urges he hadn't felt in a long time. He had to get _out_.

He struggled, but only briefly: before he could make a sound into the blackness, he had passed it. He floated on top of the shambles of his quiet hole, ears sucking in sound. _Sound._ It pooled in his ears and dripped into his skull like warm, pungent oil and brought the sound with it. Buzzing. He had a wet pool of _buzzing_ stagnating in his head.

He turned his head to move the intense yellow-green sound, groaning—only focused on the minute patterns and rhythms of his scattered body like breath and blood and sensation that hadn't quite solidified into a person yet, and the steady pulsing at his mouth as something white was pushed in--in—and opened his eyes.

If things could come into his skull through his ears, then they could come in through his eyes: but this was his _lab._ It had always been there, inside his head. His heart convulsed; he thrashed for just a second. Something beeped frantically.

A thick, long-fingered hand closed in on his face, blotting out his eyes. He couldn't move away--his body and mind were still tasteless syrup and oil, sloshing around but not mixing-- but he could flinch as it carefully loosed the plastic thickness from around his mouth. The white gas stopped rushing in: suddenly, it was harder to breathe, but more satisfying because of it.

New, non-white air filled his chest, stretching it. He let his eyes roll like marbles around the sky-blue ceiling, thinking, struggling. Remembering.

"Hey there," someone whispered. A man. The hand was back, rubbing at his collarbone. Slow and circular. "Can you hear me?"

Yes. Cornelius… could hear.

Cornelius nudged the hand away and strained upwards from the bed, eyes closed. His skin—a familiar, omniscient novelty--itched. Hands braced him, back and front, and led him into a sitting position he couldn't have managed on his own. The buzzing left his ears, but pain quickly replaced it.

"My head…" he muttered somehow, nursing the swollen piece of him with one dead hand. Those faceless hands rustled again and there was a cold sack against his temple, but his body had not forgiven the cold yet so he thrust it away blindly, which set his head off again. He groaned throatily. "Off—_no_—"

"I'm so sorry," the someone said again, soft and urgent, and fixed things. Something soaked into him—he hadn't seen the catheter in his wrist—and Cornelius could feel his heart beating a little stronger. They stayed there for a while, as they were: Cornelius gathering himself, the brassy warm feeling flowing in and steadying him. He could move, maybe.

"Is he okay?"

He moved so fast it hurt.

He straightened up and opened his eyes and didn't breathe and looked straight at Wilbur Robinson, leaning by the edge of his white cot. Glorious, dark Wilbur Robinson with a nervous, calculated smile on his face and that voice--

"Hey, good morning!" The other boy said smartly. Then Wilbur Robinson laughed, settling back and crossing his arms. He looked Lew—Cornelius over like it was all a marvelous casual joke and saluted him, announcing:

"Welcome to the future, Popsicle!"

"Wilbur, what did I—" the man said quickly, hotly—but someone spoke through him, and it wasn't Wilbur. He stared down at the pale boy in the cot, disbelieving his ears. Another moment—to master the act of swallowing, or simply gather himself—and Cornelius mumbled again.

"_W-wilbur_—"

Something in the room changed. Wilbur's face—his warm feeling, his _Wilbur-ness_—sputtered and then paled, died. Guilt. Cornelius nearly howled the name again, limp body pulsing with the blind anguish it caused.

"Wilbur, g-god—_Wilbur_—"

There was an odd silence as the thick hands stumbled on his lean chest somehow: the man lost his grip and he could _feel_ the uncertainty. Cornelius took a deep breath, until he was glaring and staring and burning holes into the other boy, who simply… stared back. Blank. Then he thrashed, drawing off of the new feeling and the utter confusion, the _lethal ignorance _of every part of this that hurt him so—the fact that Wilbur wasn't rushing and screaming to apologize how he could have _killed_ his best friend--

"Why did you _do_ that," he demanded, launching every word with a spasm toward him, clutching at that hated slip of a _person_. Wilbur backed away, palms up. The catheter caught Cornelius' wrist and tore flat flesh and he grunted, shocked, but by then two arms had fastened around his middle and taken him away from the edge of his cot. "Why in the _world_—"

He suffered a brief moment of condensed rage: Cornelius struggled, making acrid, sharp noises at the pain in his wrist and body and the fact that the first explosive urge he'd _had_ in this inelastic body was being denied. He boiled at the restriction, and then, just as suddenly, realized he had stopped breathing. He coughed, deep and wet, then began sucking and gasping. The arms loosed immediately, and one hand rose to check his pulse. The tired orange rage disintegrated as he convulsed and the coughs carved chunks off his insides. He emptied.

He looked up, quivering. Wilbur still stood across from him, face white. His hands were cupped protectively around his sides, just like… Wilbur. His Wilbur Robinson, when he had something he didn't want to say, or face.

He hadn't left. He'd… realized what he'd done, surely. The danger. Rescued him quickly. He hadn't even left the lab. So much guilt, he could _see_ it.

Shuddering, Cornelius pushed against his restraints and reached for his best friend, his _real_ best friend. Wilbur backed away with a breathy exclamation, looking determinedly up at the glass-framed sky. The warm arms tugged him back and Cornelius let go, collapsing back into the man's chest.

"Hey, woah. Woah there--"

As the world settled and the heartbeat appeared at his back, Cornelius eyes drifted back and forth. Time froze: a man hovered above him, fearful expression blurred at the edges. Dark, with glasses. Wilbur lingered in the corner of his dry, sticky eye, but that couldn't erase his face—his apprehensive, curious _gawk_.

Almost like he had never seen Cornelius before.

"Wilbur," the man murmured, still holding him tightly, but not too tightly: the grip of someone with a bird in their fist and concern for wings, for delicate parts. Cornelius lay silent. "Halve the adrenaline."

Wilbur. Dark, warm Wilbur.

He was watching… as though he had no stake in a messy, hollow Cornelius crunched against someone else, needle dangling from his arm. An outsider.

He should be so happy: Cornelius was alive, Wilbur had _saved him._ His eyes should be screaming it—there was no way Wilbur could _keep_ something this big from beaming out through his eager eyes! Now no one was hurt and it could all be forgotten, but his careful face, unchanging as he reached to turn some dials on a slate-blue machine and looked back over his shoulder, didn't say any of that. Where Cornelius wanted—_needed—_some sort of complex something, a tide of emotion or two-way connection—the trauma ringing in his body demanded it, demanded Wilbur's full bleeding _attention_—there was… nothing. Just blankness.

No. There was something. He'd seen that look on Wilbur's face when tapping at Lizzy's fire-ant farm. Three years in a row she'd entered it and each set of judges were just too unnerved to—

--_taptaptap_, looking at the skittering tidbits of candy with glazed eyes—

--he'd snatched Wilbur's wrist and made a _face,_ and the other boy reluctantly moved onto another exhibit, giving Lewis the _stink-eye_. Lewis kept an eye on him, made sure he didn't embarrass them both. He wanted to do that now: it was as though there were glass between them, and Wilbur was tapping it with his attentive eyes. He just wanted to… snatch him, grab or _shake_ him. Stop this. Wake him up. Close the distance. Why the distance?

It could… only mean one thing. How long had he been--? No. Wilbur looked exactly the same. _No_. No, he would never believe it, but his _eyes—_

A hand pressed on his heart.

"Wil_, less_."

"You don't know who I am," he whispered.

Wilbur's handsome face fell again, helpless, and he stared at Cornelius. Bare. Then he hid himself in the dials again, lean back tense under his t-shirt. A beeping nearby slowed, and the other person cleared his throat.

"We were hoping _you_ knew, son. You've been in there a long time."

And to the left, as his head listed, was the freezing chamber. Glass door neatly opened, clean of frost. Open, it was _open—gaping--_sudden, dense panic seized him at the sight of it and the _feel_ of it still in his blue-stained bones, and he arched and turned away, but the man's warm hand enveloped his shoulder (even as the catheter was popped out of his skin for good now and he jerked again).

But… a long time?

"It's all right. It's all right, but… your name. Think for a minute. Just look at my face," he urged kindly.

The stranger's face was warm and somewhat thick like his hand. He had blue eyes and dark hair and sharp rectangular glasses and a five-o-clock shadow. He looked tired—so _tired_--but satisfied.

He couldn't look at Wilbur.

"My… name is Cornelius," he said slowly. Sorting.

"You don't sound sure," the man murmured. When he moved to brush something off of Cornelius and feel his forehead, the young man couldn't find it in him to flinch or pull away. "Maybe it's Lewis?"

"He's got two names?" Wilbur interjected quizzically, snaking into Lewis' vision again with his mouth in a round O. Skirting the glass. _Distance._

Why? _Why_?

"After a fashion," the scientist or doctor said vaguely, still gazing intently into Cornelius' eyes.

"I like Lewis better. Cornelius sounds like somebody's _dad_."

"Wilbur, it's his decision."

"Not really. If he has two names, I think I'm at liberty to choose the one I like best," Wilbur explained amiably, then added with a toothy grin: "And if he likes Cornelius, I'm gonna like 'Corny'."

"_Wilbur_," the man warned him—and the tone killed Lewis.

It killed him and emptied him, not because everything was so _different_ and he didn't know why this man was here and why Wilbur was choosing him over his _best friend_, but because… because of that Voice. His Voice, deified in Cornelius' memory. That emphasis… nasal, familiar, so _caring_, but very _aware_ of the capricious imp that was Wilbur. The last time he'd heard it was from… himself. The other him. So many years from now.

Himself. Cornelius the God. The…ploy.

Cornelius let the wetness gather on his eyes. He couldn't listen to what Wilbur was saying, was _spouting_ without thinking without caring, but… Lewis. The man knew that name. Cornelius knew it too.

"Why…" He coughed, then, but they waited until he'd stopped shaking. "Why do you know?"

"We… can talk about that when you're feeling better, son," the stranger assured him, carefully resettling Cornelius' breakable body onto the cot, getting up from his chair and popping his knuckles absently against his white lab-coat. He looked Lewis in the face—that look seemed to make the boy's dry face ache, like his cheeks were going to cave and he would cough up his heart and his eyes would peel out of his skull—and smiled like he was sad.

"We do have a lot to talk about. But we're not doing anything until you sleep for at least twelve more hours."

And then he reached out, gestured, and Wilbur skirted the white bed and hurried into the safe, masculine space surrounding him like a kid. The other boy's tautness and uncertainty dissolved and he looked at Cornelius again. Carefully.

"We're so glad you're alive, Cornelius," the man said, so gently that it dragged Cornelius away from the horrible foreign imitation of Wilbur, because this…_person_ was looking at him like he was precious and rare and important, and it can't have been that _long_, had it? He was not so _alive_, because he hadn't ever been… dead. Had he?

Was this person brought in to help him? Who was he to Wilbur? His thoughts were so sloppy and overpowering, he could hardly take anything more in--

"You have a lot of people who want to meet you again," the stranger continued in an unsteady voice, moving toward the door. "I'll come back in a little while to… give you some help sleeping."

"What's your name?" Cornelius demanded, shaking as he strained toward the edge of the cot. The man looked torn between going back and forcing him in, or just answering his question. He looked down and resettled his neat glasses, grimacing some. Wilbur looked to him, staring up at this stranger for information, for _reassurance._

"What is your _name_?" Cornelius repeated thickly, suddenly vicious because this was _important._ He had to know who this man in his house was, _who was stealing--_

"Atticus. Atticus…"

The man hesitated.

"Robinson," Wilbur supplied proudly, crossing his arms again.

Cornelius froze. Atticus, throwing Cornelius a look that bordered on horrified, grabbed Wilbur by the arm and steered him down the steps and out of the golden room, slamming the door.

Sooner than he ever wanted to be, Cornelius was alone in his lab. But he wasn't so sure it was his lab anymore. Not with the new… clutter. Not with the new… things it held. Foreign. Familiar. The same, but not.

Wilbur. Something was wrong. Very wrong.

Succumbing to the confusion and the horrible exhaustion and the _distance_ where there should be none, Cornelius turned over and sobbed until it hurt and he could believe nothing had gone wrong. Atticus Robinson was an obscure relative and Wilbur had rescued him as soon as he could and his mom and dad weren't even aware he'd been frozen and things _made sense and he was safe._

Wilbur would never leave him in there. Never.


	7. Chapter 7

A/N: HEY YOU. Good to be back!

Geez, there's just too much to cover with this much timefuckery D: Just… bear with the last part. (It has no REAL relevance to what's going on in the 'real' timeline, because time-travelling!Wilbur, lovable as he is, has screwed it up beyond recognition XD It's just… what might have happened, if this story meant anything to the real MtR timeline.)

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Blue Sky Future

7

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"Yikes—woah, Dad! Dad--"

Atticus, jaw set, didn't stop until he had marched his son to the brilliant, white stairs of the Robinson foyer and parked him there, pale and reeling. He clapped a hand on Wilbur's shoulder, rattling him briefly as he demanded:

"Wil, how could you _do_ that?"

Wilbur's bandy body wiggled out of the grip: he danced up a stair or two, back against the curly golden railing.

"What do you mean?" He squawked--then his eyes drifted upwards, as if searching the contents of his head from the last ten minutes. After a beat he shrugged sheepishly, admitting: "Okay, I get it. Maybe 'Popsicle' was a bit too much—but I didn't have much else to go on, bonding-wise, since I don't like _sweater-vests_--"

"Not—"

Atticus made a strangely tortured sound, ramming his hand through his untidy hair. When he had found the words, he turned to Wilbur, who had raised his hands defensively into the air, occasionally making miniscule judo-chopping motions. Atticus was too tired to even roll his eyes.

"You didn't know. You've lived with this situation your entire life, Wilbur: but to him it's probably the most shocking thing in the world!" His father exclaimed hoarsely. "You can't just… say who we are. It's too much information."

"It's because I said 'Robinson'? Geez, I didn't know a last name would—"

"He hasn't… It isn't, yet," Atticus sighed thickly, tapping his temple: a nervous habit. "But… we have to delay it. He hasn't figured out what happened, hopefully. We need to get him settled, get his health back, then… we'll tell him."

Wilbur watched uncomfortably as his dad gazed around the bright, strangely empty foyer, as though looking for a way out. In the end, he seemed to cave.

"I'll tell him," he amended quietly.

"What… _happened_?" Wilbur asked, tiptoeing mildly back down the stairs until he was level with his frazzled father. "… I mean, besides the obvious."

Atticus almost smiled as Wilbur briefly feigned being frozen, shoulders jolting up to his ears, tongue lolling out of his mouth.

"Let me explain… Um," he blustered softly, still searching for the words. His big hands kneaded his unshaven throat, testing it as he spoke and wandered. "You're old enough to know, so…."

"No—wait. Wait, wait. You _kept_ something from me? You, Dad?" Wilbur asked archly. This, indeed, was peculiar. The Robinsons had a pact of utter truthfulness with one another, and most life lessons were learned when and where they were stumbled upon: no one was denied a proper explanation, no matter their age. To have something sequestered away… was almost unheard of.

Wilbur peered at his father as Atticus nodded humorlessly, blue eyes sobering the boy. Wilbur ceased smiling.

"What was it?" He prompted after a moment. Atticus mused, obviously wondering where to start.

"It's all about the… 'Good Morning' machine," the scientist began, a stark bit of humor in his smile.

"Aw. Dad," Wilbur grumbled, flopping back on the rail of the stairs. "I _know_ what it is, now."

"It's what the machine did, Wilbur, and what's happening now because of it. Sit down a little," Atticus offered, lowering his bony body to the stairs with a squeezed noise. Wilbur, suddenly reluctant, took a long glance around at the empty Robinson house, lingering on smooth, creamy double doors, as though willing some beautiful, crazy and—above all—_distracting_ member of their sprawling family to burst out and save him. No mistake, he was always comfortable with his dad, and he was interested, of course, but… maybe later.

Later, when the petrified face of th… Cornelius had faded a little, and he could pretend that he really was old enough to deal with this. Right now, it was still echoing in his head.

Wilbur slunk down to his knees, propping himself against a banister and nodding at his dad, who took a preparative breath.

"Picture this: you have parents. Before, you didn't."

"I know you were adopted," Wilbur interrupted brightly, half in the doomed hope the conversation would cease there. Atticus shook his head.

"This isn't about me. It's about Cornelius."

Wilbur blinked, hard. He had always thought that Cornelius had… been a Robinson forever. He didn't know who he was, where he'd come from… but that saving him was a big deal _because_ he was a Robinson. He just took it at face value. He scrubbed at his forehead, nodding absently. Both his dad and Cornelius had been adopted. Okay.

"So… you're adopted. After the longest time, you finally belong in a family. You have a last name, and a place. Like you with us, except so much more important, because you know how it is to have nobody to come home to. You have a beautiful life; you're revolutionizing the forefront of scientific progress. You're helping people. Then, something happens to you, an… an accident, and you fall asleep."

"The freezing machine."

"Right. You fall in, and it just…" Atticus made a curt motion with his hands, closing his eyes in some re-opened wound of disappointment. Wilbur felt a small chill settle in his gut. "You're trapped. Half the world thinks you're dead, while the rest of it just hopes you're not. People try to save you, but they don't know _how_; and you don't know it. You don't know anything, and your family is just… falling apart because you're gone."

Atticus paused, swiftly clearing his throat before his voice broke.

Left swimming in this hypothetical life, worrying at why his strong, smiling Dad was pausing so often… Wilbur thought of what would happen if _he_ disappeared; if everyone he had ever loved thought he was dead. He had an ego, true. He knew he was smart, handsome and basically an invaluable member (demi-god) of society, but when it came down to him and his family? He was utterly, magnificently invaluable_ to_ his family, and important because of their love: the grief that would follow his death—blank spot at the dinner table, room untouched, Mom and Dad, oh god, _Mom--_… would be _horrifying_. Just thinking about it made a tense nausea swell in his throat. It seemed egotistic to react so strongly to the idea of his own death, but… not when his family would just _die_ without him.

The fear of leaving them like that… made him hurt. It became a spasm, and a two-letter word: no. They were so important. _Everything_. But… how would it be to not have anybody?

Wilbur looked up to find Atticus watching him carefully, one big hand pressed across his unshaven chin. He felt small again, being guided away from the Good Morning machine. Thinking too deeply on the blue man with the round glasses.

"But you saved him," Wilbur said softly. "It took a long time, but you got it: right?"

"Yes. And it was the best that I could do, and the best that anyone could do. But… it goes beyond what I could do, because some things I just can't help. You're still Cornelius, alright?" Atticus continued gently; Wilbur nodded again. "Well… You're alive.

"But when you wake up, everything is _wrong_. When you wake up, someone new—another person that your mother and father call their son and love dearly--has your last name. Everyone that you ever knew is at least thirty years older than you. Everyone you loved is… so much older, and even though they waited for you, it's just not the same. Your world, for all effects and purposes, is shot. You are the most alone that anyone could ever be, because while you didn't _lose_ your life, there's just enough of it there… to remind you that you'll never, ever have what you did. That life went on without you."

Wilbur looked down. Suddenly, everything Cornelius had done in those brief moments was echoing and unsettling and sad. It was… painful, and too much to grasp. He wouldn't expect life to just stop if he disappeared—it was selfish—but to have that change paraded in front of him if he ever returned _just_ like he left? Thinking everything was going to be the same…

He couldn't stop thinking about the kid's face. How _hurt_ he was, at… everything. And he hadn't even found out what _really_ happened? Wilbur tucked his knees into his stomach, suddenly sick. It sounded like a self-contained apocalypse. And Dad: if they were both adopted by Grandpa and Gramma, and life continued on… what would this kid think his dad had _done_?

And Dad… knew. He spoke from personal experience, or something like it: all along, working on reviving the strange silent Robinson… he must have imagined this. His dad thought so far ahead, was so _involved_: how could he have not thought of the moments after his work was completed, and the real trouble started?

Atticus took a heavy breath as his son thought it over, fingers digging into his lab-coat and wrinkling the fabric piece by piece. He resettled his sharp glasses on his broad nose.

"He's my brother. Technically. But he… Wilbur, he doesn't have a place in this world. Not like he'll expect or need, at first. And we don't…" Atticus sighed, something catching in his chest. His voice was small when he found it again. "We don't know if this is permanent. We don't know if his health will hold, and I just—"

He pressed a hand to his face, and suddenly Wilbur saw how _old_ his dad was. How much this kid had cost him, emotionally. Thirty years. _Thirty years of imagining_. Wilbur himself was half that old, plus a little more. It was inconceivable. And… the fact that it might not last…

"Oh. Geez," Wilbur whispered. His father, lanky and messy and tired, stood up and cleared his throat again.

"Yes," Atticus said softly, nodding. He thumbed off his glasses and wiped his eyes, voice crushed and wet. "Just… try to take it slow with him, alright? Don't spook him. He's waited a long time to wake up: let's make his life as good as possible."

"Alright. Thanks, Dad," Wilbur said softly, getting to his feet. He reached out when his father's mournful attention seemed to drift, strong brow knotting painfully: Atticus looked back to find Wilbur gripping his wrist, strong and boyish with a faint smile on his face. Some of the sadness in his body dissipated at that image, leaving him just… exhausted.

Cornelius was alive. For now, that was all that mattered.

"Sure thing, Wil," Atticus murmured, and he scrubbed Wilbur's back vigorously. His son's lopsided smile grew. The youngest Robinson saluted him, and Atticus' rich mouth quirked at the corner. He pulled the cantankerous boy in for a hug, then sent him down the stairs with a light shove. Wilbur made a show of tripping on the last step and scowling up at him, a trespass which he returned with a sunny smile. It made both of them feel better.

They split directions in the foyer, Wilbur jogging to his room for goodness-knows. Atticus intended to talk to Franny, if… she would let him. This had shaken her up: it had done the same to everyone, though everyone else seemed to want to talk about it. She was different. She… deserved to be different. Already brooding, he mired his hands safely in his pockets and strode toward the kitchen. He slowed slightly when he realized his son's footsteps had ceased.

"Dad?" Wilbur called after a moment, colorful high ceiling adding a hint of an echo to his handsome voice. Atticus turned around, schooling his face into something welcoming again.

"Mm?"

Wilbur's hands had wound their way around his sides again, imbedded in his black t-shirt. The young man fidgeted, face wan.

"Did you… hear what he—" Wilbur began, stumbling. He bit his lip, looking twelve and in trouble again. "Did you hear it?"

Atticus looked down, thinking of those first few moments spent talking to the silent boy. Praying that he would open his eyes with the adrenaline hit his system, praying that his system would _hold_--

"_Wilbur, g-god… Wilbur."_

He didn't believe it at first, but Cornelius had said Wilbur's name… and countless other uncomfortable things. Things that… really made no sense at all.

"Yes. Yes, I did," he said softly. He looked at his son across the foyer and smiled as best he could, lifting his broad shoulders in a shrug. "And I don't know."

Wilbur watched his troubled father leave and went back to sit on the staircase, thinking about death and adopted frozen kids and the concept of _thirty years_ while his long-fingered hands twined around the curly golden rails. It was all troubling and made the normally perky Robinson feel grey and ill. But the thing that wouldn't leave him alone?

It didn't seem right that someone so smart could have just… fallen in.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-

In another time-stream or universe, far in the future or so long ago in a memory, Lewis left the Robinson house full of dreams.

They held until he left. No sooner had the sound of popping bubbles ceased, Lucille shuddered, and Bud scooped her against his chest. Petunia went silent and limp and Fritz's gnarled little knees clacked together as he studied the side of the house. Lazlo and Tallulah looked to one another, then away: Tallulah grabbed at Carl's arm, cupid's bow lips puckering, and her brother smeared something off of his goggles. They didn't understand, in a way. They had been so young.

Franny gazed into the beautiful blue, cloud-studded sky where she had lost him again. Again.

The tears began softly. Atticus, now Atticus again with his dark hair and smart glossy glasses and no longer long-nosed and affable and godlike, slid around her before the deep sobs could start jerking at her tired, compact body: when they arrived, full and malignant and swollen with loss, he took some of them into himself, one hand curled around her hot neck while she swallowed howls. He kissed her slick cheek. Her fingers fastened around his tie, groping.

The garden was beautiful and green and full of family and Lefty had already gone inside.

"Can't you stop it, Atticus?" She sobbed, choking and _trying_ through lips pulled tight over her teeth. Grieving. "C-can't you? If… if we could just… warn him—stop him from ever--"

Atticus closed his eyes and pressed his lips to her face, over and over again, throat taut. Lucille broke behind them, and the sound dwindled with distance as Bud tottered away with her. Franny looked up her husband, pleading.

"It has to happen, Fran. Had to," he whispered thickly, thumbing sticky hair from her heart-shaped face. "Otherwise…"

And his hand encompassed the world around them and it was worthy of all of their dreams no matter the tragedy it had endured, because the garden was still beautiful and green and full of family and the house would never be empty. Last, it grasped Franny's hand; he touched her wedding ring. She could still hear bubbles popping and see Wilbur's face through the sweet noise. Then she sobbed like her life would end under the blue sky, but knew: they could not upset time.

Life would have been so different.


End file.
